"How High" is purely a guilty pleasure. There’s no excusing the movie,
and no amount of justification for watching the DVD for socially
redeeming features is ever going to take. The story is thin, but the
laughs are full belly busters. Sure, maybe this would never happen in a
million years, but if two blunt-smoking guys from the ‘hood ever got
into Harvard, this has got to be how it would be.

Trading in the songwriting roles they have had for a number of movie
soundtracks, Method Man and Redman star as Silas P. Silas and Jamal
King. Chapter 1 busts out the jams with a thumping song about weed
smoking set to the opening riffs of Dusty Springfield’s "Son of a
Preacher Man" that sets the tone for the movie’s soundtrack and sets
off the subwoofer.

Silas runs his own homegrown pharmacy. People come banging on his door
in the middle of the night to get his product in a rapid ensemble. Then
Ivory, one of Silas’ best friends, shows up needing something to set
the mood with a girl he met on the Internet. Ivory leans on Silas,
telling him he’s got more going on than just being a supplier in the
neighborhood. He also tells Silas that if he died tomorrow, he’s got
Silas’ back.

The introduction to Jamal at home is a laugh fest, combining real
family dynamics with the one-step-beyond reality presentation of the
rest of the family. Anyone who has grown up in a vocal family will
cringe and die laughing at the same time.

After the protagonists are put into play and the viewer understands
both of them need something new and different in their lives, the story
returns to Ivory. His Internet date shows up and is definitely not
thrilled with him. When she leaves after a brief but spirited
conversation, the surround sound system kicks in again, putting the
slamming door through the left main speaker, followed by the sound of
the tires burning rubber out on the street through the left main
speaker as well.

In Chapter 2, Ivory tries to smoke away his depression. He watches a
reefer-inspired take on "Field of Dreams" and gets into the blaze.
Unfortunately, he passes out, sets his new weave on fire and goes up in
flames. Although the viewer will know he or she is not supposed to
laugh, the scene is hilarious, and made even more so when
flame-wreathed Ivory takes a header out of the nearby window and smacks
into the street below.

By smoking weed laced with their friend's ashes, our two surviving
heroes find that they have given their IQs a surprising boost. They
wind up enrolled at Harvard, where they contrast with their fellow
students, to say nothing of the faculty.

Summoned to the dean’s office in Chapter 6, Jamal and Silas are given a
definite warning to succeed academically or perish. While they’re
listening, Jamal and Silas snarf Cheetos and end up dropping a few on
the dean’s 18th century hand-woven tapestry. Dean Cain breaks out the
dustbuster and goes berserk, then finishes his warning.

Hector Elizondo puts in an appearance as the rowing coach, winning a
place in the viewer’s heart with the grace and charm this actor always
exhibits. In Chapter 7, volunteer safety patrolman Gerald Picklestein’s
bike is stolen by I Need $, Jamal’s couch guest in the dorm room. The
sound system kicks in again when the bike is radically destroyed,
lending a thumping subwoofer beat to the clatter and crash streaming
from the main and center speakers.

From this point on, with all the set-ups in place, Jamal and Silas
wreak havoc on Harvard. The subwoofers kick in again in Chapter 9 when
Jamal and Silas party with a couple of smart girls. Later, when Jamal
meets the girl of his dreams, the daughter of the Vice-President of the
United States, the music number that kicks in during the fantasy
introduction rocks the house, kicking the sound system into high gear
again.

Silas turns up the budding romance with Lauren. This leads to the theft
of Bart’s great-grandfather’s statue, and the act bonds the roommates.
Chapter 11’s raid on the dean’s office, with an attack of exploding
pigeons, lights up the subwoofer again, as well as threading through
the surround sound system.

Chapter 12 introduces a pimp by the name of Baby Powder who helps carry
the last third of the movie. In Chapter 14, while working on his truth
serum recipe, Silas triggers a vomiting reaction in a test subject that
comes across with graphic intensity as it splashes through the left
speaker in a seemingly unending torrent. The laughs continue as the
story fills out the thin plot requirements, and the pacing kicks up to
a frantic drive, mixing all the familiar players in cameo situations
that pay off again and again.

In a truly inspired bit of madness and desperation, Jamal and Silas do
some grave-robbing. As they cut the corpse’s arm off, the crunching
bones come through the surround sound system so clearly a lot of
viewers will get covered with goose bumps.

The DVD comes packed with an arsenal of extras. The outtakes are
hilarious, and the deleted scenes show some inspired twists. Check out
Jamal’s kangaroo mascot piece, as well as the fantasy sequence played
on his head during the scene after the theft of the statue. However,
the deleted scenes also show the changes that the script underwent as
the editors tried to rein in the madness and keep the wide-ranging
humor somewhat on track. The commentary by Redman and Method Man on the
movie is sidesplitting at times, and revelatory about what it must have
been like on the set of the movie.

"How High" is a great, fast-paced comedy film for an evening of relaxed
entertainment. For some viewers, Method Man and Redman will recall
Cheech & Chong or even the antics of Abbott and Costello. Another
good weed-smoking comedy film in this same vein is Kevin Smith’s "Jay
and Silent Bob Strike Back." Collectors of Method Man and Redman music
will probably want to add this DVD to their home collections. People
who like ribald humor will definitely want to schedule "How High" in
for a popcorn and stay-at-home night.